A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for dispensing items from a vending machine, and in particular, to an apparatus and method which can dispense items of varying sizes, shape, and type.
B. Problems in the Art
The vending machine art has a long and varied history. Presently, a wide variety of vending machine types exist. For example, machines that dispense soft drinks in aluminum cans are pervasive throughout society. Businesses and institutions frequently have machines that dispense food, either processed and preserved or fresh, and beverages, either in containers or in cups. Some are refrigerated. A number of different types of machines dispense non-edibles, for example, postage stamps, cigarette lighters, and toothpaste.
Most vending situations have in common the need to have a reliable way to dispense or deliver a selected item to the purchaser. A component receives money or some debit indicator like a token or authorization card and verifies its validity. A component allows the purchaser to select a desired item. If the validation or selection step does not reliably result in dispension of the correct item, and only one of the correct items, it is deficient.
A number of styles and types of money receiving and item selection components exist in the art. Generally, they accept coins, tokens, bills, and even debit cards to instigate the vending process. Electro-mechanical buttons or switches having numbers and/or letters correlated to different items in the vending machine are commonly used to allow the selection of desired items. Presently, the reliability of many of these types of components is quite high. Also, flexibility and correlation of control switch to selected item is relatively straight forward.
A significant deficiency has been recognized, however, in the components which are used to physically dispense items, as opposed to pay for and select items, from vending machines. In general, most delivery systems are product-specific, that is, are structured to uniquely handle a particular type, size, and shape of item. Some examples are as follows.
Candy is many times stored and vended from horizontal trays which are broken up into a number of what will be called columns. Because candy packages tend to be of different shapes, sizes, and configuration (e.g. rectangular boxes, paper packages or bags, plastic containers, paper wrapped), one common delivery mechanism is called a helix. It is basically a helically shaped wire that is positioned along the longitudinal axis of each column. One end of the wire is attached to a motor which can rotate the helix, and like an augur, can move the items (which are placed in-between spaces along the helix) forward. Rotation is controlled so that one item at a time moves to the front lip of the column of the tray and drops off to a delivery area accessible by the customer.
Difficulties with helix-type dispensing mechanisms can include the lack of adjustability of the helix. It is normally fixed in size and thus in the space between coils and its width. Therefore, the size of the containers it can dispense are generally somewhat limited. They are not ordinarily adapted to dispense things like large bottles or cans. Furthermore, the trays that use helixes normally do not pull out to allow easy loading for first in, first out dispension. While helixes dispense in a fashion that allows new product be loaded behind old, generally the fixed helix/motor combination means the reloader has to individually place items correctly along the helix and reach all the way to the back of the tray to do so.
Soft drink cans are many times vended, not by a horizontal tray, but rather an inclined tray or what are called serpentine systems, which rely on gravity to feed the cans to a tripping mechanism which then dispenses the can to an access area. Difficulties with such dispensing systems include more complex dispensing mechanisms to isolate and then release a selected can. This many times requires more motors and structural complexity. There is normally no adjustability for different sized items. The reliance on gravity to push cans forward (a passive system) can also subject the vending machine to problems, such as if a can happens to bind or otherwise get caught in the delivery path, it requires a worker to come to the machine and alleviate the jam.
Gravity feed machines are, on the other hand, beneficial for the reason that the passive gravity action eliminates the need for motors and structures to actively push the items forward. It is to be understood, however, that such systems are not conducive to dispensing plastic containers, especially the increasingly popular plastic soft drink bottles (anywhere from around ten fluid ounces to a liter). If several such plastic containers are positioned in abutment and gravity pushes down on them for delivery to a drop off, such pressure can misshape the plastic containers to the point that they will not vend, for example, one or more will get hung up along the path. Another substantial problem is that the weight behind the bottles (a problem that exists with all gravity feed systems), may force more than one container out at a time out of the dispensing mechanism. There are also stacking difficulties with such containers in these dispensing systems. Different sizes are not usually allowed. Attempts have been made to allow different sized containers to be vended from the same gravity feed tray. However, these usually involve such things as shims that must be manually installed, so that it is time-consuming and does not accommodate quick change-overs.
It can be seen that even though a number of types of vending systems exist in the art, there is still room for improvement. It is therefore a principle object of the present invention to provide an apparatus and method for dispensing items from a vending machine which improves over and solves the problems and deficiencies in the art. Other objects of the invention are to provide an apparatus and method such as described above which allows:
1. a variety of different sized items to be dispensed from the same machine, from the same tray, and even from the same column;
2. each column to have multiple degrees of adjustability to accommodate different sizes, shapes, and types of containers;
3. horizontal dispension from each column to eliminate gravity feed problems;
4. motors associated with the dispension of items to be located in the back of each column, but integrated with the column so that the column could be pulled forward for easy loading;
5. a reliable dispensing trigger mechanism which is adjustable to accommodate a variety of sizes, shapes and types of items, and which can dispense from right or left tracks in each column, if such is desired;
6. the elimination of complex, costly, and space consuming dispension triggering apparatus at the front of the column, which allows more columns or trays to be fit into the vending machine;
7. flexibility in the placement and orientation of the columns to accommodate front or side delivery from the columns.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the invention will become more apparent with reference to the accompanying specification and claims.